Bio

“Beginning with the psychological objectification, how often do we find ourselves listening to the other only to feed our own assessment of that person and what we believe categorises them? Our internal thought process conducts commentaries, when in conversation, in-between ‘listening’ to the other: ‘Ah, well, Rebecca would say that because she never lets go of her feminist position.’ Or ‘Charlie is such a passive aggressive, look he’s doing it again’ etc. The end result, of such ‘superior’ psychological insight though is the same as the unsophisticated stance, which we have all done and have had done to us: not listening. Whilst conducting our assessment of the other, as they converse with us, we are in fact guilty of the same sin as those ignorant minded folk who appear at every opportunity not to listen to what is being said to them. Both methodologies, from the ‘superior’ to the more base and unsophisticated, are snapshots of the same spectrum which exists to keep the temperature of our inner selves at a cool low, hovering around the freezing point, which also signifies a life lost to pointless self-certainty and social alienation.”

Please press the link above  the extract to find a very interesting blog

via About

Why I Don’t Go To Church Anymore: Living in the Relational Church – Part 6

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/sep/05/bukowski

“In the rush to file away Bukowski as a booze-addled fluke, his ability to lay down a truly beautiful line has often been overlooked. Take these lines describing the genesis of Los Angeles:

this land punched-in cuffed-out divided held like a crucifix in a deathhand

Or take his poem Tragedy of the Leaves which ends with the heartbreaking lines:

and I walked into a dark hall where the landlady stood execrating and final, sending me to hell, waving her fat, sweaty arms and screaming screaming for rent because the world has failed us both.

Reading his extensive back catalogue you will stumble upon a hundred, a thousand moments of brilliance like these.

Bukowski embodies the idea of the “punk poet” even better than the poets who came from the punk scene. Jim Carroll and Patti Smith were too in thrall to the romanticism of Rimbaud to truly “speak it plain”. It is Bukowski’s machine gun delivery that creates poetry that actually relates to the back-to-basics ethos of punk rock.

Unlike most poets, Bukowski was also a master prose writer. My favourite work of Bukowski’s has to be the short story collection Hot Water Music. This 1983 anthology is Bukowski at his prime, and contains some of the best writing the man ever produced: The Death of the Father (parts 1 and 2) is a heartbreaking – yet ghoulishly funny – dissection of the days following his father’s death. Some Hangover opens with the shocking premise that our narrator has just awoken with a hangover and no recollection of the night before, and is accused of molesting his neighbour’s daughters while in an alcoholic blackout. Not Quite Bernadette features the attention-grabbing opener: “I wrapped the towel around my bloody cock and called the doctor’s office.” What all of these stories share is a writing style that has been totally pared back, and a view of humanity that is cynical, deadpan, and almost entirely without judgment.”

http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-9/radical-communities-modern-community-movement.html

Short-eared Durham owl
meditating over the dale's edge,
shadows the fields and folds
in elegant diurnal flight.

On windside,careful sight
may swoop to prey
and away.

Your yellow broad-eyed look,
at once both sharp and distant,
holds me.
Oh,silence,
Oh,wind on green,
Oh, earth,
Sky.

Immense your held vision,
sphere without centre,
pied geometer of flight,
sketch your descent and ascent.

Trees bunched by dry stone wall
call heart home.

1,Mrs Smith:  accidentally pulled off the cat’s tail while cooking a chicken which the cat had caught.Unsure if A & E would treat cats.Accepted.
2.Mr Smith: collapsed with unstable angina after seeing  his cat with no tail.Solution, persuaded him it was a Manx cat until we found the appropriate glue.Cat OK.Man still wobbly
3 Angela Smith aged 14.Drunk and disorderly because of swigging brandy on seeing  a hallucinatory cat’s tail flying about.Admitted to  Donald Winnicott  Real Self Unit N.78
Expected to become real within 4 years if held correctly.Ironical as it was not a real hallucination.No vocabulary exists which can be understood by nurses with Master’s Degrees  to give the right label for believing Reality is a a mere Hallucination personal to  one’s self.
4 Jack Smith: fell down  the stairs as an attention seeking action.Broke all his fingernails but otherwise seems quite normal considering the rest of the family

signed: K.Settlement Ph.D [Bad language]
University College,Watford-on-Sea. [2004]
M A {Oxon}1991.Dissertation:On symmetry in differential operators {Failed}
M Sc.{ Watford] 2000 [How to change light bulbs with one hand using Newton’s laws of motion} [ almost managed to fail]

The summer heat  made cobblestones like stoves
The Coronation  happened,  I know now
We played with melted tar, industrial wains.

My mother’s hands were black and much beloved
The coal and coke had tattooed her, we knew.
The summer heat made cobbles hot as stoves.

In the road, we played our ancient games
The older children passed the knowledge down
We played with melted tar, industrial wains.

The bully boys  were cruel , did not heed love
A little boy had tried to be a clown
In summer heat, they beat him on the stones.

We were silent as they flaunted power again;
But in our hearts, we knew we’d let him down
We threw warn melted tar, industrial wains

And in our phantasy, he was alone.
Noone knew who threw the vicious stone
The summer heat  made cobbles feel like flames
We played with melted tar, Christ died again

https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/irony-satire-sarcasm/irony

https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/irony-satire-sarcasm/

Some days I remember that old job
Long hours and low pay  and nothing good
Working for a well known catalogue

A man came round as  nasty as a frog
He shouted,faster,stupid women,are you wood?
Sometimes I remember that old job

If we had to pee, they kept a log
Seemed as if they wanted guts and blood
Working for a cruel catalogue

The men were bosses at the old golf club
They  thought that they were wonders as they trod
I don’t  need  reminding of that job

This was long before I had a blog
No-one knew  those sacrilegious pigs
Working for  mail order catalogues

I nearly  lost my mind ,maybe I did
Sinking very slowly in the mud
Even now I shudder at that job
Working for a famous catalogue

I asked my boyfriend to stop smoking so he went outside threw himself into the old bath full of rainwater.When the flames died  down he got out and asked me what I thought
I said, I meant the cigarette, not you.~

To be my friend, respect my sacred space
Do not conquer me, we’re not at war.
Knowing this, we both receive kind grace

Love, not power, is shared by an embrace
Without this care, we will not come  near
To being friends, respecting sacred space

To love and gaze upon one holy face
To be accepted without selfish fears
To know all this, is in itself a grace.

To be connected, loving  is a state.
We must respect, be near but not too near.
Becoming friends makes a new sacred space.

The first and also last is each dear face
Where we gaze, deciphering what endured
To realise this, is in itself a grace

So life itself diseased, seeks out a cure
If we ignore what glitters, what allures
To be my friend, respect my sacred space
I am me, myself , let us save  face

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/nov/05/art-and-soul-how-sparking-creativity-helps-you-stay-well

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/nov/05/art-and-soul-how-sparking-creativity-helps-you-stay-well

“Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that
nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he
admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.”

– William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12

1 Fell off writers’ block into a pit of tigers.Bad layout.
2.Strangled by over-loving cat.Verdict: guilty
3.Large bottle of ink bounced back off wall . thus broke skull.Suicide denied by dead man or wife as appropriate [Delete one]
4 Forgot to eat while writing long novel.Was not worth it
5 Forgot to sleep owing to inspiration.Stupid despite possessing genius
6.Killed by malfunction of new laptop.[Can be returned to Amazon  free when body is removed]
7.Tried to meditate and fell out of the window. Accidental death
8 Tried to clean outside of the window with a microfibre cloth.A pane broke and cut his throat.Incidental death
9  Got depressed by lack of air.Jumped and lost balance killing two cats on the patio.Verdict Unfurred
10.Thought he was sleepwalking and walked off roof of extension [only just completed].Insurance will be paid.
11.Fainted in  church and was used as a human sacrifice.Jesus wept
12 Hit head on bannister while falling down the stairs.Euthanasia while dizzy.Resurrection imminent
13.Fought off wife but bitten by the dog .Both dead.Verdict, pointless end.
14 Wrote a best seller, got drunk and died of shock!
15 His blog was declared a threat to humanity.Died of shame.

The lavender I dried lies in between
The   past, its  memories, and the present day
These  pages of the book you wrote and dreamed

I see you writing and the way you leaned.
The cat across your shoulders loving lay.
The lavender I dried was not yet seen

Now empty is the room  that held those scenes
The old cat  died, depriving me of play
Here still  are the pages of  books  dreamed

Is life a lesson, what does living mean?
Are those wounds of  battle or dismay?
The lavender I dried scents the unseen

That was life eternal, so it seemed
But you have gone and none are here today
Except the pages of  these books  we dreamed

When will we reach the harbour, fine and gay?
For God is smiling as we cross  the bay
The lavender I dried lies in between
The pages of the life that we once dreamed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/how-power-corrupts-the-mind/277638/

“Though it’s not that the powerful are bad people. “There is a tendency for people to assume power holders are uncaring, they’re cold, they don’t care about the little people,” says Pamela Smith, a power researcher at the University of California San Diego. But that’s not always the case. It depends on who gets the power. “You put someone in an experiment, temporarily, in a high-powered role, and what you find is that people who say they have pro-social values, the more power they have, the more pro-social they are. The people who say they have more self-centered values tend to be more selfish the more power they have.””

To be a writer you must buy a block
Then you need a pen and paper both.
I don’t what my shops have in stock

You have no right to find another dock
So stand in court  and take a solemn oath
To be a writer you must buy a block

Quickly  stir your dinner in a wok
For brains need food when energy falls low
I don’t what omens are in stock

You might need more paper, hire a truck
Fill it up with reams  of  stuff in rows
To be a writer you must buy a block

Once you write a line, you’re  called unstuck
To its fellows you must be the host.
I don’t what  sentences we stock

The sentences must run out  unenforced
And between them we ignite  further words
To be a writer you must buy a block
Just see what  the Bailey’s got ad hoc

Remembrance, anniversaries in the mind
The date, the number, year return again
The painful feelings flood up, unresigned

Yet were these rituals once a  good design
To shed the many tears that still remain?
Remembrance, anniversaries of the mind

And to the lonely mourners are they kind?
They make the loss of love so very plain
The painful feelings well up, unresigned

Those who cannot see, the wilful blind
And those who withold love cause helpless pain;
Remember in the solitude of  mind

For the lost, our little heart will pine
The wildness of the feelings is untamed
The painful facts are noticed, undermined

Death is  here and tears flow out unfeigned
The symbols of normality disdained
Remembrance, anniversaries hit the mind
The painful feelings rise up and resound

You revealed the face within your face
Human, lowly, humbler than an ant
The pathos in your eyes made sad my gaze
The other face, defended, has no grace
With it , you appear quite confident.
Yet you revealed to me your hidden face
I know so well the suffering of your days
A fear of tragic pasts feared imminent
The pathos in your eyes made sad my gaze
The mental torment heavy all your days.
Yet you must hide from men intolerant
You revealed the face within your face
Like martyrs, you were tortured and disgraced
You wandered feebly, lost, itinerant
The pathos in your eyes makes sad my days
If God exists then would  he not embrace
The lost, the lonely mad, the poor vagrant?
You revealed the face within your face
The pathos in your eyes makes me ashamed

I declare reason is fake
For aught a case it can make
Choose the right axioms
Choose the right factions
Then take it all home to re-bake

Since my husband died I’ve burned eight pans
And  just like him I’ve got eight wireless sets
I leave the hot tap running and I’m banned
For breaking all the cups I’ve not caught yet.

I do the stupid things I told him off for
Like putting empty pans back on the gas
And sometimes I have even thanked professors
Who tell me in my dreams I’ll  never pass

I’m back at Uni  feeling lost and lonesome
Wondering  if I’ll ever  find a room
Wondering if my mind will get some thoughts in
Or will my world come down to crash and doom?

I’m relieved I’ll never have to retry
To teach those undergraduates to knit pi

I got a new phone with an answering machine so I said to it
Why is the country in such a mess? But it didn’t anwer.I’ll send it back to BT and ask for a refund.No wonder the country is in a mess if answering machines are too lazy to answer my questions.Even if it just said,Noone knows,that might have helped me.As it is I shall see what the fridge says about it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/255411/bonhoeffer-brave-interview

“A new look at a 20th-century hero Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life was more riveting than most of the novels written this year. And Eric Metaxas, in his new monumental biography of the Lutheran pastor who was executed at the Flossenburg concentration camp after his participation in a failed attempt to kill Hitler, tells Bonhoeffer’s story with the fluidity of a novel. Metaxas talks about Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez. ”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/255411/bonhoeffer-brave-interview

I thought I’d write fifty-five sonnets
And a novel as well, while I’m here
But the writers’ block fell on me
Fellow poets yelled at me
All I could  make was a tear.

Will villanelles be better subjects
If all I want is quantity?
I never knew what they were,
The very name seemed bizarre.
How hard is my job going to be?

Well, maybe the triolet being shorter
Will give me a kick in the pants
My husband is watching me
His ashes rise from the TV
He said ,why can’t you get a  big grant

I  used to write free verse when starting
As I never thought I’d  go on
But the demon-possessed me
It gets very pesky
And Jesus b’aint here, eeh by gum!

I wrote on some paper at dinner
For my husband had  got very slow
I wrote two good sonnets
I am very honest.
I  didn’t ken  that was death’s door

He said, why don’t you talk to me, Mary
Instead of misusing that pen.
But he knew nothing of logic
Which I felt was quite tragic
So I put him to bed with a hen.

I see the hens as a blessing
Instead of a duvet of down.
They may lay an egg in bed
But as Jesus , no doubt, once said
The cock will crow thrice for a noun

http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/improve-my-writing/quality-v-quantity-do-they-need-each-other

“Now that I’m escaping from the vacuum of National Poetry Month and another successful April Poem-A-Day Challenge, I find myself wondering about the relationship of quantity and quality in writing. Is there value in writing every day? Is a writing routine a good or bad thing for poets? Questions such as these have been swirling around my head, and here’s my take: I think quantity can lead to quality.

First, let me be clear: Quality is the ultimate goal for any of the poems I try to get published. I’m not trying to publish as many poems as I possibly can for the sake of getting published. I wrote for more than a decade before I even tried submitting my poems, so quantitative publishing is not my end game, and I would not recommend that route to other poets. In my mind, one great poem is better than a million poems nobody remembers. So, let’s not get mixed signals about my views on quantity and quality.

I do think the way to be good at anything, including art, is to practice. If you’re a painter, you paint. If you’re a mathematician, you solve problems. If you’re a writer (whether you write fiction, nonfiction or poetry), you write.

Of course, there are many other layers of complexity that can be placed on the poet’s shoulders. Poets should read other poets. Poets should revise their work fearlessly. Poets should take chances. Poets should listen to the world around them. Poets should live. But at the end of the day, poets should write poems.

During the month of April, I wrote 30 poems in 30 days (actually, a handful more than that). Am I going to hold on to all those poems? No. But I am hopeful that a few will stick around and make it into a collection after revision. Or at the very least, maybe a few lines or images will find their way into another poem or two down the line. As my friend S.A. Griffin likes to say, it’s all about process.

Here are a few reasons why quantity leads to quality:

• Writing poems prepares you for inspiration. Inspiration strikes when it strikes, and everyone is struck with inspiration from time to time. What separates a poet from others is that the poet is ready to take that inspiration and turn it into a poem. A painter might take the exact same inspiration and turn it into a painting. A novelist a novel. And so forth.
• Writing poems opens your mind to more poems. Some poets hold onto an image or idea until it is fully processed. I think this is great, but sometimes I lose those images and ideas if I don’t write them down. Plus, I’ve noticed when I write I clear that space in my head for new ideas and images.
• Revision comes after the first draft. Great poems come from revision. It’s hard work, sure, but poets can’t revise unless they have first drafts upon which to play. In other words, poets need to write to revise.

Of course, there are many other routes to quality beyond quantity, but I often feel poets (and other writers) are afraid to write anything that’s not nearly perfect on the first draft. Don’t be afraid. Write, write, write. That’s the only path you can take to get to the ultimate goal: a quality poem you love.”